The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Knowledge house
it through to the end. Take my word for it, that girl will be out of the house by twelve noon.”
Knowleton sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
“Oh——”
“Brace up! It’s all over. I thought for a minute there in the hall that you were going to balk at that Chinese business.”
“It was the vaudeville that knocked the spots out of me,” groaned Knowleton. “It was about the meanest trick ever pulled on any girl, and she was so darned game about it!”
“She had to be,” said Mrs. Whitney cynically.
“Oh, Kelly, if you could have seen the girl look at me tonight just before she fainted in front of that picture. Lord, I believe she loves me! Oh, if you could have seen her!”
Outside Myra flushed crimson. She leaned closer to the door, biting her lip until she could taste the faintly bitter savor of blood.
“If there was anything I could do now,” continued Knowleton—“anything in the world that would smooth it over I believe I’d do it.”
Kelly crossed ponderously over, his bald shiny head ludicrous above his feminine negligee, and put his hand on Knowleton’s shoulder.
“See here, my boy—your trouble is just nerves. Look at it this way: You undertook somep’n to get yourself out of an awful mess. It’s a cinch the girl was after your money—now you’ve beat her at her own game an’ saved yourself an unhappy marriage and your family a lot of suffering. Ain’t that so, Appleton?”
“Absolutely!” said Appleton emphatically. “Go through with it.”
“Well,” said Knowleton with a dismal attempt to be righteous, “if she really loved me she wouldn’t have let it all affect her this much. She’s not marrying my family.”
Appleton laughed.
“I thought we’d tried to make it pretty obvious that she is.”
“Oh, shut up!” cried Knowleton miserably.
Myra saw Appleton wink at Kelly.
“’At’s right,” he said; “she’s shown she was after your money. Well, now then, there’s no reason for not going through with it. See here. On one side you’ve proved she didn’t love you and you’re rid of her and free as air. She’ll creep away and never say a word about it—and your family never the wiser. On the other side twenty-five hundred thrown to the bow-wows, miserable marriage, girl sure to hate you as soon as she finds out, and your family all broken up and probably disownin’ you for marryin’ her. One big mess, I’ll tell the world.”
“You’re right,” admitted Knowleton gloomily. “You’re right, I suppose—but oh, the look in that girl’s face! She’s probably in there now lying awake, listening to the Chinese baby——”
Appleton rose and yawned.
“Well——” he began.
But Myra waited to hear no more. Pulling her silk kimono close about her she sped like lightning down the soft corridor, to dive headlong and breathless into her room.
“My heavens!” she cried, clenching her hands in the darkness. “My heavens!”
V
Just before dawn Myra drowsed into a jumbled dream that seemed to act on through interminable hours. She awoke about seven and lay listlessly with one blue-veined arm hanging over the side of the bed. She who had danced in the dawn at many proms was very tired.
A clock outside her door struck the hour, and with her nervous start something seemed to collapse within her—she turned over and began to weep furiously into her pillow, her tangled hair spreading like a dark aura round her head. To her, Myra Harper, had been done this cheap vulgar trick by a man she had thought shy and kind.
Lacking the courage to come to her and tell her the truth he had gone into the highways and hired men to frighten her.
Between her fevered broken sobs she tried in vain to comprehend the workings of a mind which could have conceived this in all its subtlety. Her pride refused to let her think of it as a deliberate plan of Knowleton’s. It was probably an idea fostered by this little actor Appleton or by the fat Kelly with his horrible poodles. But it was all unspeakable—unthinkable. It gave her an intense sense of shame.
But when she emerged from her room at eight o’clock and, disdaining breakfast, walked into the garden she was a very self-possessed young beauty, with dry cool eyes only faintly shadowed. The ground was firm and frosty with the promise of winter, and she found grey sky and dull air vaguely comforting and one with her mood. It was a day for thinking and she needed to think.
And then turning a corner suddenly she saw Knowleton seated on a stone bench, his head in his hands, in an attitude of profound dejection. He wore his clothes of the night before and it was quite evident that he had not been to bed.
He did not hear her until she was quite close to him, and then as a dry twig snapped under her heel he looked up wearily. She saw that the night had played havoc with him—his face was deathly pale and his eyes were pink and puffed and tired. He jumped up with a look that was very like dread.
“Good morning,” said Myra quietly.
“Sit down,” he began nervously. “Sit down; I want to talk to you! I’ve got to talk to you.”
Myra nodded and taking a seat beside him on the bench clasped her knees with her hands and half closed her eyes.
“Myra, for heaven’s sake have pity on me!”
She turned wondering eyes on him.
“What do you mean?”
He groaned.
“Myra, I’ve done a ghastly thing—to you, to me, to us. I haven’t a word to say in favor of myself—I’ve been just rotten. I think it was a sort of madness that came over me.”
“You’ll have to give me a clue to what you’re talking about.”
“Myra—Myra”—like all large bodies his confession seemed difficult to imbue with momentum—“Myra—Mr. Whitney is not my father.”
“You mean you were adopted?”
“No; I mean—Ludlow Whitney is my father, but this man you’ve met isn’t Ludlow Whitney.”
“I know,” said Myra coolly. “He’s Warren Appleton, the actor.”
Knowleton leaped to his feet.
“How on earth——”
“Oh,” lied Myra easily, “I recognized him the first night. I saw him five years ago in ‘The Swiss Grapefruit.’”
At this Knowleton seemed to collapse utterly. He sank down limply onto the bench.
“You knew?”
“Of course! How could I help it? It simply made me wonder what it was all about.”
With a great effort he tried to pull himself together.
“I’m going to tell you the whole story, Myra.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, it starts with my mother—my real one, not the woman with those idiotic dogs; she’s an invalid and I’m her only child. Her one idea in life has always been for me to make a fitting match, and her idea of a fitting match centers round social position in England. Her greatest disappointment was that I wasn’t a girl so I could marry a title; instead she wanted to drag me to England—marry me off to the sister of an earl or the daughter of a duke. Why, before she’d let me stay up here alone this fall she made me promise I wouldn’t go to see